Mad Jackal Run
by Atticus Black
Summary: The Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service was sent into Raccoon City to rescue the civilians. We only saw a few of them in the games. This story follows several of them throughout their mission in the heart of the biohazard outbreak.
1. Introduction

Hiya.

This is a story I've been working on for the past little while. I'll be posting it as fast as I am able to, but update times may, as per usual, vary.

The story is called "Mad Jackal Run," and is set in the Resident Evil Novel universe during the Raccoon City Outbreak. I shall be avoiding the main players (especially Trent, because I hate him) as much as possible, although there are a few cameos here and there. The characters are mainly mercenaries, although there are a few civilians here and there, as well as the odd Umbrella goon.

And the usual copyrights apply. I.e. I do not own any characters or concepts owned by Capcom or S. D. Perry.


	2. Mad Jackal Run: It hits the fan

**The skyline over Raccoon City** was dark and smoky as the helicopters crossed through it. There were thirty of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service soldiers jammed into the big chopper, ready to drop down into the combat-torn city and rescue surviving citizens. Amir Naidaheb was one of them, sitting with his back to the wall, listening to the drone of the chopper. He was a member of B Platoon, in squad A, which meant little to him. All he knew was that he was with good men and they were here to help out the Raccoon Police Department and rescue some helpless civilians, maybe even get some "alone time" with one of the more grateful ones. He grinned at the thought, but let it drop out of his mind as he heard the pilot shout "We're a minute away from the LZ!"

The chopper hovered over a large industrial parking lot, as the men lined up to grab their weapons and drop down the line to the ground. Amir hit and rolled, lining up with the rest of his squad quickly. He looked over and saw a few of the men he knew from other squads and gave them a thumbs up and a grin, then stopped as the squad's leader, Sergeant Kuan, began barking orders at them. They found out that they were to head along one of the main roads, Central Street, towards the police station, and secure the area along with the rest of B platoon. Having received the orders, Amir and the group marched off, surprised at the lack of sound after the helicopters left. "Like nobody's home…" he thought to himself. Other than the sound of wind moaning by his ears there was nothing.

His squad separated from the other two in B Platoon, trooping off down Park Street. Amir saw lots of trash and debris in the street, as well as several cars and police barricades further down the road. Blood coated the ground in several places, as well as the spent brass of 9mm rounds and shotgun shells. Kuan held up his hand to order the squad to stop, readjusting the backpack he had been carrying, and motioned for Amir and another soldier, some new kid named Garcia, to check out past the barricade and report back. The pair walked up to the large blue metal walls marked with "Raccoon Police Department" and peered to the side of them.

Amir expected anything but what he saw. Bodies lay in the street, stacked three-deep in some places. Most of the had been shot to pieces, while a few wore a blue police uniform and lay on the street, long since bled out from several wounds. It looked like the officers had been bitten until they had died, skin torn off in several places. Garcia turned away and gasped something in Spanish, causing Amir to turn and look where he was looking, hearing moaning in the distance. Amir saw dozens of people approaching the squad, and heard the sergeant shout something, causing the men to open fire. Garcia ran towards the fighting while Amir froze, studying the battle from a distance, realizing with a shock that the moaning came from the crowd.

It was strange. The men in his squad started out firing what looked like well aimed three-shot bursts into the crowd, but that didn't do any good. Soon, the men were firing full auto into individual targets, backing down the street and yelling in fright. The crowd, however, was largely ignoring the shots plowing into them. Even the ones dropped were crawling forward. Amir saw all of this from the other side of the street, saw as Kuan and the other men were overtaken by the moaning crowd, how individuals staggered forward into a stream of gunfire and attacked the UBCS. He saw a few of the squad members break formation and run towards him, including two of the men who had fought out of the crowd. He saw them run by him, and he realized he was all alone on this street, suddenly no longer safe. Amir saw all of this, and he began running too.

**Mad Jackal Run**

**Chapter 1: The Shit hits the fan**

**Story by John Malone (AKA Atticus Black)**

**"Oh shit oh shit oh shit…"** Jose Garcia babbled as he ran. He had watched as Kuan and three of the other mercenaries were pulled down screaming, watched as they were covered and bit at by those crazy cannibal fucks, and he panicked. He fired the rifle dry, reloaded, and did it again. He watched as the target he fired at get up after the first magazine discharged, and watched as it continued to crawl toward him, leaving half of its body behind him. Garcia knew this wasn't what they talked about in the briefing, that these weren't sick people hallucinating things. He knew what he saw, and what he saw was zombies, plain and simple. That's when he ran, along with a few of the others, passing by the shocked Private Amir and through the barricades.

Garcia and the other four soldiers found themselves running down Ema Street, heading towards the sound of gunfire, hoping to regroup with the UBCS. They passed by a few alleyways and saw more of the "zombies" stumble out after them, heading towards them and letting out that hellish moan. Finally they were forced to stop, many of them gasping from the sight. "Oh… god…" Garcia said.

Dozens of zombies were on the street, heading for the UBCS mercenaries. It looked like they had caught one of the platoons while it was still together, and they fire upon them. Garcia and his group joined in, firing at the zombies in front of them. He knew it would do little good, but couldn't think of anything else to do. He fired a three-round burst into the upper chest of a man in a business suit, who stumbled backwards but continued on towards him. He fired again and again, his aim worsening, until he managed to accidentally score a hit to the head, blowing the right side of the mans head away, dropping to the ground. It lay motionless, which caused Garcia to shout with grim glee, yelling "YOU HAVE TO SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD," as loudly as he could muster. He knew the men next to him heard him, as they shifted aim and began firing, and noticed that some of the others heard him as well.

However, it was rapidly growing too late for A platoon. Two of the squad leaders had vanished during the fighting, and many of the soldiers had been drug down by the zombies. A few of them had ran for it, fighting their way through the zombies, while the remainder ducked into buildings or alleyways, or climbed on top of cars to fight it out. Garcia was firing into the horde when he noticed one of the men with him get dogpiled by a large number of the zombies from behind, screaming all the way as he fired his rifle dry. Garcia looked back and saw twenty or more of them behind them, too close for comfort, and yelled for a retreat, pointing down a side street. He didn't look behind him as he ran, hoping the others had heard him.

**Meanwhile, Amir had been running** as fast as his legs could carry him. He was sure that the people his squad had been firing on couldn't be killed by gunfire, so he dodged the few on the street, heading south towards the police station. Swearing in Arabic, he saw that the road ahead was blocked by a fence, of all things. He was on a dead end street, with no way out that he could see. Nothing was ahead of him, so he turned around and ducked behind a stalled police vehicle, and began firing at the men and women behind him, aiming down the carrying handle sight of his M4A1 for head shots, thinking desperately that if they couldn't see they couldn't find him. He was shocked when they dropped after having the top of their heads blown off, but kept up the firing. Soon afterwards he was the only person still standing on the street. Looking down, he saw he had fired two magazines off for his firearms, leaving him with another four in reserve. Retrieving the magazines, he looked for a building he could duck into so he could take a break and let his mind roll over the details of the evening. He saw a building that looked both empty and easy enough to break into, and read the sign with his moderate skills in English. "Jack's Bar. Hmm…"

Walking through the open doorway, he scanned the room with his rifle. There were a few collapsed bodies in here, shot in the head and chest by what looked like a powerful handgun. A pair of empty barrels lay pushed out of the way of the front door, and a jukebox was sitting against the far wall, playing old songs Amir had never heard of at a low volume. As he searched the bar he noticed that most of the hard liquor was gone, so Amir assumed some survivors had taken it, either for drowning their sorrows or drowning the zombies in fire. He popped into both bathrooms but found them equally empty, so he pushed open the last door, entering a stairwell.

Another body lay on the top of the second landing, next to a pile of garbage and other junk, as well as a few more corpses laying in a pile of smashed wood in front of a hallway. The hallway led to what looked like an employee break room, with a few other doors. Amir checked all the rooms, finding nothing but more bodies and junk. The third floor and roof were in a similar state, although there were a lot more bodies on the roof, including a few broken and dead birds. Sighing with relief, Amir walked down to the office he found and pushed the desk in front of the door, sitting heavily in the chair and looking out at the patio. From his position he could see the alleyway behind the bar, how apparently at one point there was a massive fire there. He lay the rifle down on the desk and put his face in his hands, moaning in despair.

His bosses had lied to him, to them. This wasn't any ordinary accident, he knew now, and these people weren't just hallucinating rioters. The town was dead, or it would soon be, and Amir didn't want any part of it. He picked up the rifle and began searching the desk and other areas of the room for supplies, knowing that the few magazines he had for the rifle and handgun weren't going to cut it.

**Dr. John Ross knew when** he heard the pounding on the door in the morgue that he was probably screwed. Ross was a research scientist at one of Umbrella's less than legal laboratories, working underneath the city to create new and more exciting means of killing off random folk. Specifically, he was the head of research on the MA Hunter series at the testing area in the Uptown part of town, hidden underneath a shell warehouse. The labs were designed to be self-contained villages for the scientists and other personnel, with living areas, generators, break areas, and even a medical lab and morgue. That's where Ross was, sitting on a gurney, reloading a riot shotgun.

He had been chased to this room by a trio of MA121 Hunters after they had escaped their enclosure a few hours ago, but he managed to lock the door and kill the two virus carriers in the room. Now he sat, waiting for either the Hunters to break the door in or the infected corpses in the morgue to escape. Standing up, Ross began to pace about the room, debating about letting the zombies or the Hunters in so he could attempt to finish them off. There was no food in here, so he couldn't hole up for long, and he knew damn well that he had to make it to the extraction point across town by the 30th. That was plenty of time, if there were no obstacles in the way, but Ross knew that the streets were overrun, making travel difficult.

Sighing, he realized that he would have to fight something to get out of here. He knew there was ventilation access he could reach in the morgue, so he decided to play it safe and tackle the zombies instead of the Hunters. Even with the shotgun he knew the MA121's could kill him easily if he made a mistake, and he wasn't as trained as he would like to be in gunplay and combat. Walking over to the morgue door, he quickly turned the handle to the door and stepped back even quicker. The door was pushed open, revealing a half-dozen of his former colleagues, naked and covered in rot, gore, and wounds. He lifted the shotgun and fired it into the lead carrier, a former aide of his who was rather cute until something ripped off half of her face. Her head exploded in a cloud of buckshot and gore, which managed to hit another in the head as well, removing the former security guard's head up from the nose.

Stepping back, Ross pumped the gun and aimed again, targeting another. This happened for five more shots before he stopped, surveying the damage. The carriers were down, although he had misaimed a shot and left a carrier alive but heavily wounded, unable to move from its position due to the lack of most of its body. He fired the remaining shot into the still alive zombie, splattering the head all over the floor. He stepped back from the combat and reloaded, noting that he only had five more shells left, and entered the morgue, sweeping it quickly with the heavy gun. A body lay torn apart on the floor, evidently savaged before it could revive fully. The head snapped its jaws at him, and Ross was unsure who it was, or even what gender it was. He took a step back and kicked the head, once, twice, until it lay still. He sighed again, wondering what caused the virus to leak in the town, before he headed for the vent shaft in the corner of the room, climbing onto a table to enter it.

**The newspaper office had seen better days.**

It was an imposing three story building in downtown Raccoon City, especially now, as most of the windows were covered with locked down metal shutters. Smoke was curling out of one of the open second story windows, adding to the dangerous look of the building. The front doors to the building were hanging open slightly, as though inviting an unwary visitor to enter. The sound of gunfire echoed from the second floor, once, twice, then another a few minutes later.

Irene Bryant was climbing over the fire engine, trying to get past the rudimentary barricade, when she heard the shots from the building. She stopped, standing precariously on the edge of the ladder, and crouched as she saw a brown-haired ethnic-looking man in combat gear run from the front of the newspaper office, heading down the road. She was about to call out to him when she decided against it, worried he was going to kill her. Instead, she waited until he left, entering the shopping district further down the road. After seeing that he was gone, she clambered off of the engine and looked around for any hostiles.

The area was clear, she saw, although the dozen bodies laying about worried her none the less. She stepped gingerly over the body of a fallen police officer, a shotgun clutched in his hand (which she procured, along with the pouch of shells on his shoulder), and continued towards the newspaper office. Irene worked here, and wanted to get her notebook and her personal effects, including a .38 handgun she kept at the office.

She pushed open the doors to the office, noting a blood trail on the floor, leading up the stairs. An assault rifle lay propped next to the payphone, by a pool of blood that was no doubt infected by the Raccoon Syndrome, as the journalism team had been calling it. She picked it up, unused to the weight of the firearm, and slung in on her shoulder. She knew the basics about firearms, but had only really used handguns before that point. What worried her was that the other soldier had a rifle. "Was there another soldier in here?" she thought to herself, worried.

Walking up the stairs, Irene paused at the first landing. The printing room had caught fire at some point, slowly burning up, which explained the fire engine outside. She coughed at the rising smoke, noting that the door had been blown off at some point. The blood was on the door and other areas, so it must have happened before the soldier had been here. She paused at the door to the third floor offices. The door had bloody handprints on it, and the door's bolt had been broken, leaving the door open permanently. Irene pulled the rifle off of her shoulder and pushed the door open, aiming the rifle down the hall.

The door to her boss's office and the editor's office was closed, black smoke leaking out from the bottom. Further down the hall the door to the main office was open. A corpse of a man in a white paramedic's outfit lay in front of the door, its head ruined from what looked like gunshots. She walked forward, stopping to look through the window between the rooms, and gasped in shock.

Two bodies lay in the room. One was dressed in garb similar to the soldier outside, the back of his head blown apart, black hair messily obscuring the exit wounds. The other body was that of Jeremy Evans, one of her coworkers and an ace reporter. She knew he was going to stay at the office during this, but didn't think he would have been killed. Both showed signs of being infected with the Raccoon Syndrome, although the soldier looked… fresher than Jeremy or the paramedic. After checking the room one last time she entered, sweeping behind the desks with the unfamiliar rifle. The room was clear, so she sat down at her desk and pulled open the drawer.

Inside the large drawer was a locked case, which contained the .38, two speed loaders, fifty rounds of .38 ammo, and a holster that could be worn on the waist or shoulder. She withdrew the case and opened it, putting rounds into the gun and the loaders, and attaching the holster. She stuffed the extra ammo into her jacket pockets and stood up, deciding to check the dead soldier for ammo or anything useful/interesting.

Flipping the body over, she unlatched the tactical vest and pulled it off, along with the man's holstered pistol. She put those on the desk and frisked his pockets, turning up three magazines for the pistol and a wallet. Looking in the wallet, she saw the man as he was alive, a cute, black-haired man of 25 named Randall Thomas, who worked for the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service. Putting the wallet and ID down, she went through her acquisitions, nodding in approval.

She had a .38 revolver with fifty rounds of ammunition, a SIG Pro handgun with sixty rounds of ammunition, an M4A1 assault rifle with one hundred and eight rounds of ammo, and a Remington M870 shotgun with twenty-five shells. She smiled at this; although the weight was a lot, even with the holsters and the slings, she had enough ammo to hold up on her own for a while. Sighing, she realized she would have to wear the dead soldier's tactical vest to carry all the ammo.

Irene was about 5' tall, with a slim build. She was dressed in a pair of black ladies slacks, nice casual shoes, a blue blouse, and a light jacket. She stripped the jacket and put on the UBCS vest, tucking the jacket back over it and stuffing most of the ammo back into it. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, put the gun belt on, and attached the .38 to the belt. She imagined she looked like some sort of B-Movie action star, covered in guns and ammo. Irene really hoped she wouldn't turn out like one of them, as they tended to die off rather quickly. She grabbed the shotgun and started towards the stairwell door, weighed down with both weapons and worries.

**The zombies that had overrun** B squad had dissipated, either following the few survivors or wandering off after feeding on the corpses. Unseen by them, Sergeant Li Kuan crept out from under a parked car, clutching his right side. The zombies had taken a good chunk out of his arm, shoulder, and chest, and while it wasn't fatal, it was damn sure inconvenient. He needed a spot where he could rest and treat his wounds, deciding to loot the three corpses of his comrades when he wasn't bleeding severely. He stopped and picked up the backpack he had been carrying, however; he didn't want to lose what he had inside there.

Looking around, he saw that the store next to him had yet to be broken into, possibly because the window had a big metal shutter over it. He decided to change that, cracking the glass of the front door with his rifle stock and unlocking the door, entering the building a second later. He scanned the room quickly using the in-store mirrors and his flashlight, and saw it was clear. It was a small pharmacy, which caused him to feel extremely lucky. Picking up some gear, Kuan maneuvered over into the back room, behind the counter, and began applying gauze, bandages, and ointment to his many wounds. Other than a large chunk taken from his chest, most of his bites were shallow and weak, like they had been gnawing him instead of biting. There was a lot of blood lost, though, which was making him woozy and light headed. "Or it could be the virus…" he thought to himself, before driving that from his mind. He needed to keep calm and focused, now.

After applying the bandages rather haphazardly, owing to the fact that he was doing half of them with one arm, Kuan found a case of bottled water and began chugging them, hoping to get enough to replenish himself before securing the room and taking a nap. As he drank, he heard the door to the place get pushed open, and swore silently in Cantonese. "Those fucks have found me…" he thought, hefting his handgun, a Chinese Type 67 silenced pistol his father had given him as a gift. He needed to keep this quiet, so he opened the door out into the main room quickly, aiming at the first figure. It was dark, so he couldn't make out the details, but saw that there were three of them. One of them moaned as it saw him, and started shambling towards him, like the others had when they attacked him. Waiting no longer, he fired twice.

Both shots hit high in the temple. He aimed, his vision blurring, and fired at the next two, dropping them as well. Kuan stepped over the bodies, careful to keep away from their heads, and walked to the door, locking it. He thought for a few seconds, and slid a small shelf full of vitamins in front of the door as well. He then took out his flashlight again and looked over the bodies, eliciting a gasp after he saw who they were.

"My squad!" the sergeant said to himself, shivering from fear and realization. "The virus was only in them for thirty minutes!" he though frantically to himself. "How long do I have," he wondered aloud. He holstered his Type 67, rolling the bodies over and scouring them for ammunition. The zombies of his former squad had left their rifles outside, but they still had a lot of ammunition in their vests, as well as various side arms. One was carrying several grenades of varying types in a pouch, which was definitely not issued to him. He retrieved all of this and set it in the back room, moving the bodies into a storage closet.

He had found twelve more magazines for his M4 and seven grenades (three anti-personnel, two flash-bang, two incendiary), a Browning High Power with four spare magazines, a Desert Eagle .50AE with four spare magazines (which he tossed onto the counter with a snort of laughter), and a Glock 18, unloaded, with six spare 33 round magazines. This joined his M4 rifle (with 3 spare magazines), his Chinese Type 67 with five magazines, and his secret ordinance in the backpack, given to him to field-test in Raccoon City.

Kuan grinned. He'd need this, and more, to make it to the labs further in the city and complete his mission. The virus merely made things more interesting.


	3. MJR: Taking stock of the situation

**Raccoon City was a mess from the air.**

Helicopters hovered over Raccoon City here and there, invisible to most of the survivors due to the black clouds of smoke and the looming rain clouds. They watched, and waited, for signals here and there. One such chopper heard its signal, the bells of the clock tower, but had gone down from an anti-aircraft rocket minutes later.

It had been about five hours since the UBCS landed, and already reports were coming in from the Watchdogs. Most of the mercenaries had been cut down, the most optimistic reports saying that only thirty percent had survived, but the writing was on the wall. The mission to gather data from the mercenaries had failed, which left the Watchdogs with only one mission: to gather as much data from the area as possible. This wouldn't be an easy mission, as the choppers could see.

The streets were clogged with the undead, as well as the occasional bio-weapon that could be seen. Flocks of undead birds waited on rooftops, thankfully unable to escape the city due to the mysterious workings of the virus. The animals from the Raccoon Zoo had turned, wandering the streets and killing anything in their path.

The city was screwed.

**Mad Jackal Run**

**Chapter 2: Taking stock of the situation.**

**Story by Atticus Black**

**Garcia had made it, but **he wasn't sure about the others. He had ran for some time, fighting through the zombie crowds until his rifle went dry of ammo, and ditched the now useless rifle before he left Ema Street, heading nowhere in particular. Finally, he had run out of energy and ducked into the subway, managing to close the shutter there. He had been sitting in front of the shutter for some time, catching his breath and worried about how he was going to get out of town.

He clutched his H&K USP, now down to around a magazine and a half for the .45 caliber handgun. He also had his knife, but was worried about getting into hand-to-hand combat with one of the zombies. He looked ahead in the flickering overhead lights towards the door that led further into the subway station, fear clutching at his gut. Garcia was unsure what happened to his flashlight, so he was worried about running into a dark area. Walking down the stairs, he pushed the double doors open with his gun, scanning the room quickly from the doorway. A lone zombie tottered next to the turnstiles, wearing office garb, his white shirt covered in blood. Other than that, it looked clear.

Garcia walked out quickly, aiming and firing in one smooth motion. The lone zombie crumbled and let out its last moan before it even knew Garcia was there. Garcia stopped, paying attention to his surroundings. If there were more, they would have heard that.

A minute or two later, and Garcia had not heard a thing, nor did he see any more zombies heading his way. He quickly ran towards the other street entrance and up the stairs, gasping as he saw the fire. Somehow, a car had gotten jammed over the other entrance to the subway terminal and had caught fire. It was an effective, if dangerous barrier. He turned and walked back into the main terminal, quickly checking the rest rooms and the ticket office. The rest rooms were empty, although the blood everywhere had been a bit disconcerting. However, the ticket office was a mess.

A lone body rest in the office, his head missing from the jaw up. A sawed-off shotgun was clutched in his limp hand, resting in his lap after the suicide blast. Garcia held his breath and pried the gun from the man's hand, rummaging through his pockets for shells. The man was dressed in a subway worker uniform, and had five shells in his jacket pocket. Checking the gun, Garcia found that it held four shells and only had three in it. He reloaded a shell and tucked the rest into one of his vest pockets, shutting the door and turning away from the office.

Garcia tried the turnstile and pushed it open easily, entering the other side of the terminal. He looked down both sets of stairs, seeing that the tunnels were dark; the lights were off. "Great," he said, and saw that there was an employee area behind a metal door. It was locked, but Garcia was a rather muscular man, and kicked at the door until it opened. The door led to a poorly lit hallway, which he began walking down, clearing rooms as he did so.

After ten minutes of jogging down corridors, scanning empty and dark rooms, Garcia finally ran into opposition. A trio of zombies, dressed in subway worker uniforms, was lurking in the locker room. Garcia aimed his new shotgun and fired twice, tagging the zombies in the face and decapitating the three of them due to their closeness in the cramped room. Behind them was a fourth worker, gnawed to pieces. Reloading, Garcia cleared the rest of the room and checked the lockers. He found an aluminum baseball bat, and took it, deciding to use it over the knife if he had to fight with a melee weapon.

The rest of the sweep was uneventful, although the stairs leading to the power room has been locked. Garcia re-entered the control room for this terminal and saw a bank of security monitors on one console. He looked through them, seeing several zombies meandering in a stairwell, as well as a few on the track. A subway train was parked on the track, which Garcia decided to use to escape this area. If he was lucky, he'd end up near the edge of town and escape, hopefully making it past the National Guard that had quarantined the town. According to the console next to the security monitors, the train was powered down. He powered it and the terminal up and left the room, heading for the stairs to the subway track.

He entered the first track and saw that this was the wrong track, as it lacked a train. He walked back up and went to the second track, grinning as he saw the train parked there. Several zombies were on the track and trying to climb to where Garcia stood, but he ignored them and checked the subway cars. They were clear, except for blood and dropped possessions. He entered the control room and powered up the train, starting it down the track…

**Outside Jack's Bar stood a crowd **of those things, many of whom were scrabbling at the door to the building, which had been cleverly replaced by a table stolen from the employee area and nailed to the frame. To add to the matter, Amir had drug the heavy desk down the stairs and pushed it in front of the table, as well as the barrels from earlier. The few rioters smart enough to be scrabbling at the unbroken windows did not have the strength to beat through them, although he was worried about how they would hold up against more of them.

Amir had been searching and fortifying the building most of the night, deciding to turn this place into his own little headquarters before he started his mission to find survivors. He'd found a nailgun and spare nails, as well as a bunch of boards and scrap lumber. Unfortunately, he found no weapons or ammunition in the building, which annoyed him greatly. There was plenty of alcohol, so he made a few Molotov cocktails for when he decided to make his run. He sat at the bar now, slowly downing vodka from a bottle, annoyed at the lack of food.

Placing the bottle down, Amir decided to begin his hunt for survivors. He retrieved two of the cocktails and headed for the stairwell, exiting the building through the window into the alleyway. A dumpster provided access back into the building, but he pushed it away last night to block the alleyway entrance to the street in front of the bar. A human could get in the window, but one of those rioters would have difficulty, as they seemed to lack finer dexterity. He looked in the direction of the street in front of the bar, seeing a lone figure shamble past the dumpster. "Another rioter…" he thought, and walked the other way, climbing over the parked car that blocked the other end of the alley.

He was in a different part of the alley, one that bordered a large, hotel-looking building that had a fire burning on the third floor. The other side was an apartment building. Amir wanted to avoid both of them, afraid that they contained more crazed rioters. He crept up to the end of the alleyway, seeing that it ended in a staircase, leading to the back section of a third apartment building. Sighing, he realized he would have to enter one of the buildings or backtrack. He walked down the stairs, deciding to check on the closest one to him, and crossed the small area. An open window invited him in, so he entered…

**Irene crept through downtown Raccoon City**, careful to avoid contact with most everything. She had managed to outrun a small crowd of the infected, as well as a pack of infected dogs, and dodged past several carriers on her way through the city, finally arriving outside her apartment building. She ducked inside, sweeping the room with her shotgun, before walking towards the stairwell. She lived on the third floor of the building and even though the walk would hurt her, especially with all of her gear, it was safer than the elevator.

She entered the stairwell, listening at the door. She didn't hear any moans in the room, so she started walking up the stairs, aiming the heavy gun forward as she walked. Her diligence paid off, the door to the second floor landing open and half a dozen carriers were walking towards her. She fired, hitting the first few with her blast and knocking them down, before closing the door on them. She watched the door for several seconds, hearing the sound of the infected people, her former neighbors, rubbing against the door and weakly pounding at it, before continuing up the stairs.

Irene entered the third floor hall and cautiously pressed forward, aiming down the hall at a lone zombie, one of her neighbors. The girl was dressed in a sports outfit and was rubbing against the window, not noticing her killer until it was too late. The shotgun bucked in Irene's hand, breaking the window and toppling the zombie to the floor. Walking towards the second to last door, she fumbled with the lock and opened it, entering her small apartment.

The apartment was small, made more so by the furniture crammed into it. She closed the door, locking it as well, and placed her finds down, taking off the vest and jacket as well. Leaving her small arsenal on her couch, with the exception of the handguns, she entered the kitchen and began making a small meal. She had been out most of the day, running from the infected citizens and the occasional infected animal, and she needed the food.

She had been eating a sandwich when she heard the clatter of automatic weapons fire from downstairs, on the second or first floor. She panicked, tossing the sandwich onto her plate and retrieving the assault rifle from her couch. She heard it, off and on, for several minutes, wondering who was doing the shooting and if they were friend or foe. Finally, she heard heavy steps on her floor, and stood silently aiming the rifle from her position in the kitchen doorway. The footsteps stopped by her door, obviously examining the corpse near it, and nearly jumped out of her skin when the person tried the door, turning the knob several times but finding it locked. The person then knocked on the door and began saying something, which she could barely make out through the door.

"Is there anyone in here? I am with a rescue team and I am here to evacuate civilians…" The voice was muffled through the door, but it sounded like a male, and by the way he stressed certain words it was obvious English wasn't his first language. She debated with herself for a few seconds, then decided to let him in. If he was dangerous, she had an assault rifle and would spray him down. "Hold on, I'm opening the door," she said loudly, and walked towards it, rifle aimed at the door frame. She one handed it while turning the lock and stepped back. "It's open!"

A dark skinned man with black hair and a goatee, wearing the military outfit she had seen earlier stepped into her apartment, obviously shocked to see her aiming a rifle at him. "Do not shoot!" he shouted and stepped back, hands in the air. He was about six feet tall and decently muscular, and was carrying an assault rifle similar to her own. His face, although cute in its own way, was currently twisted into an expression that summed up the phrase "Oh shit." She lowered the rifle, seeing that he wasn't a threat, and he relaxed to an extent. He extended his hand cautiously and unsurely, saying, "I am Private Amir Naidaheb with the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service. We are here to rescue the civilians. You are?"

She took the hand, shaking it once, and said, "I'm Irene Bryant with the Raccoon Daily News. What's this about an Umbrella Bio-whatsit team?" She smiled, as Amir began talking about the mission he had been assigned, gesturing when he ran into a word he didn't know well. Apparently, Umbrella had sent in over a hundred soldiers to rescue civilians and aid the Raccoon Police Department in abating the crisis, but considering the RPD was non-functional at the moment due to a lack of manpower it seemed like a moot point. That, and according to Amir the UBCS had most likely been overrun, like most everyone that took the fight to the zombies. Amir had managed to get away and had secured a building for holding civilians until they could get a plan to get out of town.

Irene had been annoyed that Amir didn't have a surefire method out of town, but he told her that the squad leaders did know where to go, and had radios to boot that could talk to the Umbrella helicopters that stayed near the city. Unfortunately, his squad leader had almost certainly been killed by the zombies a few blocks north of the building, and the others locations were a mystery.

"So what's the plan now, Amir?" Amir shook his head and said "Well, I was going to take you back to the building and search for more survivors…" Irene scoffed at the idea, saying "You're going to leave me alone in a building I don't know, taking me away from my safe apartment? Tell you what. You get more people into that building of yours that are armed and can defend it and _then _I'll go with you." Amir started to protest, but Irene shook her head, pointing towards the door. "I'll stay in here, and I'm plenty safe with all of these guns," she said, gesturing towards the couch. Amir lowered his head, looking defeated. "Fine. Well, in case you want to head there yourself, the building is south through the alleyway, the bar?" he said, as though a bar was a foreign concept to him. She understood. "That isn't too far…" she thought to herself as Amir left through the door, shutting it behind him.

**Sergeant Kuan had made to the hospital, **but it hadn't been easy. He had fired off five magazines of M4, taking down nearly two hundred zombies, and had only barely made it over the barricades into the hospital.

He sat crouched in the lobby, rifle over his shoulder and clutching the Glock 18. He didn't want to use the rifle in the cramped corridors of the hospital, as it would make combat unnecessarily difficult. Scanning a nearby map of the hospital, he saw that the elevator he needed to access to get to the third basement floor was two rooms over, and headed that way, carefully scanning the area with the heavy handgun.

He passed through the waiting room office and marveled to see that there were several leaches on the floor, crawling towards him. He stepped over them and watched as one jumped at him, causing him to press to the side to avoid it. "Tricky little fuckers…" he thought. They were probably T-Virus creatures, which is why he was avoiding them as much as possible. He stepped through the door to the next office, shutting the door heavily behind him, which alerted the zombie in the room.

The man was a doctor, who had had his throat torn out. Ordinarily Kuan wouldn't have bothered putting him down, but the zombie shuffled at him at high speed. Kuan aimed the gun quickly and put a trio of rounds towards his head, smiling at the quickness of the handgun in his hand. The zombie collapsed with a groan, a round finding purchase in its eye.

Kuan entered the elevator and found the third basement button, tapping it quickly and stepping to the back of the elevator in case there was zombies in the hallway. While he rode the lift down, Kuan had smiled, thinking of the viral cure that awaited him after he got down there. "Aquino was working on a sample. Hopefully he left his notes or a sample down there…" he thought.

He heard a loud and cheerful "DING" as he arrived at B3, and he aimed the gun forward as the doors opened. A lone zombie shuffled towards him, which he put down with a single headshot and waited. The doors caught on the collapsing corpse and held open, but Kuan did not hear anything from the barren hallway, so he stepped out, leaving the zombie body in the way of the doors. He didn't want any unexpected company while he was down here.

**Ross was truly beginning to see how thoroughly screwed over he was.**

The good doctor hadn't been as well prepared for the situation as he would have liked. He joined the company before mandatory combat training for the scientists was a necessity, and had neglected the option of training in it at a later date. Ross was also not in the best physical condition, what with being a scrawny "nerd" and almost fifty. Finally, he only had a shotgun with twelve rounds. He was surprised he managed to take out the zombies in the morgue, let alone what he had been doing for the past five hours.

Earlier, he had escaped his floor through the ventilation system, arriving safely at the elevator and barely evading the MA121's present on the floor. He took the elevator as far as he could go, arriving at the first basement floor, a full hundred feet below the surface of the Earth. Umbrella didn't fuck around about hiding their labs, burying them far underground and setting up the elevator systems so that they could only be accessed in the lab. To add to the protection, the entire first basement floor was centered on security. While this was all well and good for keeping the place safe from your typical corporate spy or thief, it didn't help a damn against the virus carriers or escaped bio-organics.

Ross had arrived at the first basement level and had been forced to run right as the elevator opened. The level had several zombies lurking around, former lab security as well as unlucky scientists and maintenance personnel. Many of them were trapped in various checkpoints after the lockdown had been initiated, but Ross had to free them in order to escape. He had barely gotten up from the security terminal before the first zombies were on him, and had been running for the stairwell since then, firing only to knock the zombies out of his way. Adrenaline was a hell of a thing.

Finally, he made it to the stairwell that connected the lab to the outside world. There was a lift, but he didn't have the codes to get that out of lockdown, so he was forced to run up the several flights of stairs, chased by the relentless but slow virus carriers the entire way. He finally collapsed near the top of the stairwell, within sight of the door that would lead to the warehouse, totally exhausted from the workout he had been getting that day. Ross sat against the wall, deciding to reload while he was there, annoyed to find that he only had five or so shells left for the heavy gun.

Nearly a dozen flights below him a throng of zombies was meandering up the staircase, their moans a hellish cacophony of sound and rage. Ross knew that if he didn't get out of there quickly he'd be torn limb from limb, so he got to his feet and limped towards the door, his exhaustion causing him pain in every step. Pulling a keycard from his waist, he quickly scanned it through the reader and opened the door, collapsing on the other side, waiting for the lock to kick back in. The room he was in, the warehouse security room, was empty except for a bit of blood on the floor. He heard the ding and pulled himself away from the door, hoping the heavy steel would keep the zombies back for a time.

He limped over and plopped down into a comfortable rolling chair, the shotgun in his lap as he scanned the security monitors. The warehouse hadn't been breached, or at least in a way he could tell, yet there were a dozen or more zombies scattered around here and there. They were mainly workers who maintained appearances at the shell warehouse, although there were a few security guards and another unlucky science team member. One of the workers or guards probably had been infected and spread it to the others.

There were a few bodies here and there, probably killed by the guards, but there was the possibility that they were recently killed, or that they had gotten a second dose of the virus. He really hoped they hadn't gotten a second dose of the T-Virus, as he would really hate to deal with a mutated zombie or a RE3 "Licker" unit, the monsters that came from such an incident.

Looking around, Ross saw that the weapons locker was open. He rolled the chair over and looked through it, noting with some displeasure that most of the heavier stuff was gone. He saw a full box of shotgun shells as well as a few spares, a 9mm handgun that hadn't been loaded, and a half-dozen clips for the 9mm. He scooped them up, stuffing shells into his shotgun then his lab coat, and placing the pistol clips in his pants pocket, sliding the light handgun into his other coat pocket. Ross looked over back at the monitors and was surprised to see himself in the monitor, the room being the focus of one of the four monitors for a few seconds.

Ross was a rather plain looking older man, with thinning and graying brown hair and a pair of delicate looking glasses. He was dressed in a lab coat, khaki slacks, and a light blue button-up shirt and dark blue tie, which was white, white, and light gray in the colorless monitor. Ross was surprised at how old he looked in the monitor, noting that it was a rather different change than his usual appearance. Sighing, he got up from the chair, his legs protesting from the exertion, and began the arduous task of putting down the walkers in the warehouse, so he would have a chance to think and get his act together. The twenty plus shells he had picked up, plus the 9mm handgun, would make a world of difference when he made his run for the extraction point.

**Amir had left the apartment building in defeat,** knowing that it would be difficult to find more people in this land of death.

He had walked out the front doors, heading for the "Uptown" area he had seen on a map of the town (which, in his haste, he had forgotten to take), hoping to find survivors among the citizens or police. Right now, he was trying to find his way around the charred wreckage of the Main Street when he heard gunfire and screams close by. He hurried back up the stairs for the bridge and saw that the shots were apparently coming from inside the North Mall, which was locked down. Swearing, Amir realized he would have to break in. Hefting his assault rifle, he began firing at one of the metal shutter's locking mechanisms…


End file.
